Summing Gravitational Effects from Loops of Inflationary Scalars

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to resum large logarithmic corrections caused by inflationary scalar loops in gravity, clarifying the need for cosmological constant renormalization and explaining effects on gravitational radiation and potentials.

Contribution

It develops a procedure for resumming inflationary scalar loop effects in gravity, including a conserved form and a renormalization group approach.

Findings

Large logarithmic corrections are explained by a renormalization group method.

A finite renormalization of the cosmological constant is necessary.

Implications for graviton loops are discussed.

Abstract

We develop a procedure for re-summing the large logarithms induced in gravity by loops of inflationary scalars. We first show how the scalar can be integrated out of the field equations in the presence of constant graviton field. We then extend this result to a fully conserved form which explains the need for a finite renormalization of the cosmological constant which was previously inferred from explicit computation. A variant of the renormalization group turns out to explain the large logarithmic corrections revealed by explicit computation in the electric field strength of gravitational radiation and in the potentials which characterize the response to a point mass. The implications for graviton loops are discussed.